In computing systems, such as web servers or application servers, threads are used to handle transaction requests. A “thread” is generally defined as a sequence of instructions that, when executed, perform a task. Multiple threads may be processed concurrently to perform different tasks such as those tasks necessary to collectively handle a transaction request. A “transaction request” is a message transmitted over a network that indicates what kind of service is requested. For instance, the message may request to browse some data contained in a database. In order to service the request, the recipient initiates a particular task that corresponds to the nature of the requested task.
One problem associated with conventional computing systems is that a significant amount of processing time is spent by a central processing unit (CPU) on thread management. In general, “thread management” involves management of queues, synchronizing, waking up and putting-to-sleep threads, context switches and many other known functions. For instance, in systems with a very high thread count, on the order of thousands for example, operations of the systems can be bogged down simply due to thread management and overhead, namely the time it takes to process threads.
A proposed solution of reducing the high processing demands is to preclude the use of a large number of threads to handle transaction requests. Rather, single threads or a few threads may be configured to handle such requests. This leads to poor system scalability.
Currently, there are computing systems that have threading control built into the CPU such as a CRAY® MTA™ computer. However, these systems suffer from a number of disadvantages. First, only a maximum of 128 threads are supported per CPU. As a result, support of a larger thread count would need to be implemented in software. Second, integrating circuitry to support up to 128 threads occupies a significant amount of silicon real estate, and thereby, increases the overall costs for the CPU. Third, the threading control hardware of conventional computing systems is stand-alone and is not connected to the rest of the system (e.g., input/output “I/O” circuitry). Since this hardware does not have the proper interface with the rest of the system, true automatic thread management is not provided (e.g., waking up a thread when a “file read” operation that the thread has been waiting on is completed).